The present invention relates generally to Internet protocol, and more specifically, to connecting a home network to the Internet.
Traditionally, the Internet has been connected to homes through modems. Many homes, however, have multiple devices. These devices include appliances such as telephones, fax machines, televisions, ovens, lights, and the like. It is sometimes desirable to network these devices to enable control of these devices and also information exchange between them. For example, with networked devices, one device may receive instructions from another, or multiple devices could be controlled remotely by a third device. Further, it may be desirable to have this home network to have access to, and be accessed by, the outside world. Traditionally, the home service set only supports a single end point due to the complexities of topology management and address space depletion that supporting IP subnets in the home implies. There is a need to have a home network visible to the rest of Internet. If this is the case, then each device on the network could send and receive information using the Internet.
There are a number of known systems that connect a home network to the Internet. One such system, known as a full router, assigns each device on the home network a unique Internet address. In this implementation, the home is not the end, or stub, connection but instead the home network is a sub-network. This implementation also increases the complexity of network administration while minimizing opportunity to re-use IP addresses across multiple customers.
Another known system which alleviates the address problem is call Network Address Translation, or NAT. NAT is a 1:1 address translation, that is, for every address in the home network there is a corresponding address at the NAT. Another version of NAT, called Port Based NAT, uses a N:1 translation as a single address is shared by multiple end-systems on the home network.
In NAT and Port Based NAT, the home remains the stub connection on the Internet and circuitry in the home translates the incoming information to the required devices using internal network addresses. This address translation introduces additional address topology complexity into the home network, which is undesirable. Furthermore, the home network addresses are private and the devices in the home network are not visible to the outside world. Hence, an incoming signal can not contact a specific device without that device first setting up the connection. Therefore, only client applications are supported and server based applications are not. An additional problem with NAT is that is breaks the end-to-end model required by such services as IP security (IPSEC).
Port Based NAT associates each internal address with a socket. While the Internet address may specify the location of a computer platform on a network, a socket, or a port as it is sometimes known, has been traditionally used to specify a particular application on that computer platform. Typically, ports have allowed multiple applications to share a single address, and therefore using ports, an Internet protocol data stream can be demultiplexed to the various applications on the computer platform. Thus, Port Based NAT maps the address of a the device on the home network to a single Internet address and a specific port. The disadvantage of Port Based NAT is that although the devices are able to connect to outside the home, the outside world is not able to see the mapping of the ports and instead only the single Internet address. Therefore, as in NAT, only client applications are supported and server based applications are not.
Therefore, NAT and Port Based NAT permit a home network that is an Internet protocol based sub-network transparent to the service model of a single public address. NAT and Port Based NAT, however, interfere with the home service set, such as, IPSEC as already mentioned, electronic commerce, multiplayer gaming and the like.
Thus, there remains the problem of supporting an arbitrary number of devices in the home while being transparent to the single Internet identity service set.
For the foregoing reasons, there is a need to provide an apparatus and method for client and server based applications for devices on a home network connected to the Internet through a single Internet address.
The present invention is directed to an apparatus and method for client and server based applications for devices on a home network connected to the Internet through a single Internet address.
An embodiment of the present invention is an apparatus for connecting a home network to the Internet using a single Internet address. The home network has at least one home network device. The apparatus includes a home gateway connected to the Internet and includes at least one home gateway port. Each home network device is connected to at least one home gateway port. The home network further includes means for autodiscovering, for each of the at least one home network device, the home Internet address.
Another embodiment of the present invention is a method for connecting a home network to the Internet. The method includes the steps of connecting at least one home network device to a home gateway using at least one home gateway port, connecting the home gateway to the Internet using a single Internet address and autodiscovering, for each of the at least one home network device, the home Internet address.
An advantage of the present invention is that the connection of the home network to the Internet supports unicast and multicast data streams, and client and server applications embodied in the home network devices.